


To Endure

by channilingus



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, M/M, Reflection, Regret, alternative universe, mention of drug use, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-14
Updated: 2016-10-14
Packaged: 2018-08-22 08:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8278615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/channilingus/pseuds/channilingus
Summary: Sasuke has many regrets. People say time heals the pain, but It's been 10 years and he still finds new things to regret about past events.





	

You're 16 years old before you learn what regret means. You remember growing up with your head held high and wearing your convictions on your sleeves like a badge of honor. You always thought of things as black and white. You were ever confident in your ability to negate the middle ground. You were honest to a fault and you loved that about yourself.

The day you learned the true meaning of regret changed your trajectory.

You’re 16 years old when you black and white world is illuminated before your eyes in shades of grey. It only takes three words to alter reality in a second and it’ll take too many years before you can think of those three words without choking up. You spend those years slightly dazed, heavily medicated, and full of self loathing. You’re positive the world has permanently shifted on it’s axis by 3 degrees. You’re positive you woke up in a parallel dimension. You’re positive a Higher Power held a magnet to the cosmos and screwed everything up. You’re positive there is no God because if hell was real you were already there.

You’re 26 now, visiting your old town where you lived during grade school. You’re driving past the old mall taking the back roads to Shikamaru’s family house, neither of you actually want to go there but Shikamaru has to feed the animals and you told your mom you would visit her while you were in the city, so you two decided to make the hike together.

You try not to think to much about the memories the intersection brings up as you idle at the red light. Shikamaru must have been thinking of the same face as you because he is staring off in the direction you are trying not to and says “I haven’t visited him in awhile.”

Your chest tightens. Some things will never change, even a decade later. “I smoked a blunt with him before I moved away earlier this year.” You reply in a shakey attempt at nonchalance.

You used to say you were not nostalgic but as you’ve aged you’ve realized that was just a lie you told yourself in your youth. One of the many traits you’ve had to admit to yourself. Shikamaru doesn’t say anything else about the topic but as you wind your car through the roads you drove frequently as a teenager you find yourself reminiscing about the biggest regret of your life.

The first thing you had noticed about him had been his blonde hair. Firmly grasped in pre-teen denial you didn’t identify this as attraction. It would be years before you admit that to yourself as well.

The next thing you noticed was his loud mouth. You tried not to smile when he cracked jokes in class. You tried not to seem interested in what he has to say, or what he wore, or how he carried himself. You tried hard to act aloof and cold like you wanted people to think you were, but the first time he talked to you it’s game over for your heart. He liked the same music as you, hated his half-sibling like you hated your older brother (except not really because that's family and you’d jump anyone who talked shit, only you could do that), he gave you compliments on your drawings in your sketch book, showed you his poetry, and eventually asked you if you wanted to go to youth group with him because his mom was making him go and he doesn’t really do the ‘Jesus Crowd’ but when he is grounded that's the only place he is allowed to go _so do you wanna go too?_

Before you knew it you made friends with the new kid in school. The loud blonde haired boy from the west coast that saw through your layers of ill-fit black clothes, jet black hair, and guyliner (because it's not gay it's scene, fuck you.) You bonded over shitty music and shitty home situations. You bonded over dry humor and witty jabs. You bonded over things left unsaid, words that will forever coat your throat.

At 13 everyone was struggling with depression. At 13 it was everything you could do to not be consumed by it. The doctors had started to medicate you and you had been forced to go to a shrink when you told your step-grandfather that you were plotting the death of everyone in the house when he interrupted you reading a comic in the kitchen. You had been mad as hell. But Naruto had understood. He told you not to tell anyone, but he was on anti-depressants too. He told you not to tell anyone, but his dad was in jail and his step father was a douche and his mother never listened to him and they should all go fuck themselves because you were just trying to make it by in life holding onto the shit end of the stick.

Naruto was your best friend for the rest of middle school. Better than Kiba who had also recently moved to the school, who could get you cigarettes and had already lost his virginity. Better than Kakashi who lived down the street and had been your closet friend by proximity but was now rapidly becoming cooler than you. Better than Ino who you told people you kinda-sorta-liked because she was best friends with Sakura and you liked Sakura but she was way out of your league so you went for their best friend instead, who allowed you to touch her boob in drama class and would later give you a blow job in the movie theatre while watching ‘Snow Dogs’. Better than TenTen who introduced you to pot. When you were with Naruto, everything just felt right again and all those actions done in rebellion didn’t matter.

The two of you, along with Kiba, spend as much time together as you could. Which in all honesty wasn’t a lot because everyone was always grounded and when Kiba’s mom met Naruto’s mom they didn’t get along, everyone's parents work full time, and you’re in and out of the hospital due to chronic migraines while the doctors run every test in the world on you trying to find the cause. 

You all go to youth group together, almost every Wednesday. One time you all went to Naruto’s house and used his piercing gun to give each other matching cartilage piercings. You kept that piercing in your ear even after the keloid formed years later. One time you all chipped in together and bought a dirty novel full of sex -- because it was easy to tell your parents you wanted to go to Barnes And Noble but not so easy to tell then you wanted to smoke pot at the strip mall-- and the three of you spent a night reading the chapters to each other while joking about who would need to go to the bathroom to ‘fix’ their issue first. Another time you convinced one of the mothers to drop you all off at the creepy cemetery down the road and you all wonder the plot and smoke cigarettes.

Kiba gets pictures developed and gave everyone copies. Your favorite is the one you snapped of Naruto while he loaded the piercing gun. Later you’ll regret you didn’t call his name before snapping the picture. You’ve forgotten the exact color of his eyes.

One time, Naruto tells you and Kiba that he thinks he was bisexual. Kiba immediately said he thinks he was too, but you tell them you are straight. This is the biggest lie you remember ever telling Naruto -- just another one of those things on the long list in your head.

At the end of 8th grade when everyone was deciding which of the two local high schools they would be attending, you finally convinced your mother to allow you to audition at the local art school in the city. You’re so nervous sitting in class telling everyone that you couldn’t fill out a schedule for high school before your audition that you’re pretty sure you’re ready to vomit but the look that Naruto gave you when you tell him your plans squashes all your fears. He was excited as he exclaimed you're the best artist he knows and that you would definitely get in. You believed him, because he said it and you knew Naruto didn’t lie. You were the liar.

When you get accepted it's bittersweet. You got away from the jocks and preps who made your life shitty but your two closest friends are going to high school together and you were going alone.

Whenever you think if the artist you will become, you feel guilt. That was a feeling that hadn’t changed at all in the years since.

The summer before high school is painful. You have a hard time remembering exactly what happened but the distance that grew between you and your two closest friends feels miles wide. Naruto starts hooking up with the cool girl Hinata from youth group, the one all three of you thought was hot. Naruto and Kiba spend all summer together while you travel across states to see your father. As they get closer together you become jealous but you don’t let either of them know that when you are on a three way call with them. You’ll regret telling yourself they didn’t care about your friendship.

When you’re on the phone with Naruto he tells you, I miss you.

When you’re on the phone with Kiba he says, Naruto talks so much shit about you.

Right after high school began Naruto calls you and tells you he drew you a picture. He said he missed you and just felt like it and he would give it to you the next time he sees you. You tell him you’re going to draw him a picture too and immediately do so when you get off the phone. You draw him name and try to immolation this new style of digital art called vector as well as your could using your hand-me-down prismacolor markers.

You’ll never get that picture Naruto drew you.

You’ll never get to give Naruto his drawing.

In art school you become best friends with Suigetsu, a painfully skinny boy with lesbian mothers. When your brother tears his ACL and your mom gets her tummy tucked in the same year you make friends by trading hydrocodone for xanax or klonopin. You start chain smoking, and listening to even more obscure music, and watching B and C Rate films, and trying whatever drug you can get your hands on, and skipping school on the city bus, and going to shitty metal shows.

You lose your virginity that year to one of your classmate’s older sister. Kiba is there, having sex with an upperclassman in the other room. Naruto isn’t there.

You don’t see Naruto for almost two years after high school starts. You had heard plenty about Naruto though. You occasionally saw Kiba out and about and you two would talk, you even got him a part time job with you working at the smoothie place in the gym, but he rather smoke cigarettes and weed with his trashy older girlfriend and ended up quitting in a week. Naruto was having behavioral problems, he had gotten into a fight and sent to Truancy School for the majority of his freshman year. He was on again and off again with Hinata. You see your friends from middle school and hang out in the same crowd but Naruto is always grounded or with Hinata. Naruto’s mom turns off his cell phone and the day you convince your older brother to take you to Naruto’s apartment you find out his family has moved. You’ll regret not trying harder.

Shikamaru comes to the art school from the high school that Kiba and Naruto went to at the beginning of sophomore year. You two ride the bus together, have a few classes, and realize that you both share friends from the local high school. You two are both friends with Naruto. Shikamaru doesn’t tell you this for many years but he finally admits to dating Kiba for a week in high school before realizing that Kiba had been serious when he asked him out. He had thought it was a joke. When he tells you this you can’t control your laughter. You’ll say, I can’t believe you never told me that. You’ll say, Kiba dated everyone.

Shikamaru takes the best friend spot when you and Suigetsu get into a fight over Suigetsu moving your still wet photographs off the drying rack in the Photography room and ruining them. For the first time since you meet Naruto, your heart starts acting weird around a member of the same sex when you're in the company of Shikamaru. You get your car a year later and you tell Shikamaru he can catch a ride from you to and from school, if he wants. He takes you up on the offer.

You’re 16 the next time you see Naruto. You’re at the local hang out and suddenly your name is being screamed out and you’re getting tackled and bear hugged. It’s the first time you’ve seen that smile in years and you can’t control yourself when you hug back. You’re so happy to see him. Your heart hammers in your chest and you’ve had sex now and you’ve been attracted to other people and you are always honest with yourself and others because liars suck, but you still can’t admit to the feelings you have towards other men. You ask him how he has been.

He says, it's his birthday week. He says, he turns 16 in three days. He tells you, you better hang out with me on my birthday. You tell him you definitely will because it's been entirely too long. You say, I still have that drawing.

He tells you he has officially broken up with Hinata. He tells you he feels great. He tells you he is the happiest he has been in a while. He tells you he doesn’t have a cell but to give him your number and he’ll call you. He tells you he loves you, misses you, tells you look good, but that he has to go now.

This is the last time you will ever see Naruto alive. You’ll regret not seeing through his lies.

Regrets only manifest in hindsight. The amount of time you have spent thinking of the would of’s, could of’s, and should of’s is overwhelming. What if you had listened better when Naruto’s laughed about his sadness in not having a father? What if you hadn’t gone to a separate school? What if you had told Naruto that his smile made your heart beat a little faster? What if you had admitted to yourself that when Naruto started dating Hinata that you weren’t jealous of Naruto getting a girlfriend first but that you were jealous of Hinata getting Naruto? What if you had tried harder to stay in touch? What if you had asked more people if they had Naruto’s number? What if you had told Naruto just how much he meant to you? What if you had seen that massive smile for what it truly was – a bag being pulled over society’s eyes.

You’ll never know these answers because Naruto isn’t alive anymore and hindsight only shows you what you should have been questioning.

Naruto will hang himself at the jungle gym in the neighborhood next to his on a Thursday morning instead of going to school. He is found a little before noon and by 6th period, when you’re sitting in French 1, Suigetsu, Karin, and another boy who sits next to you all start getting text messages. You all run in the same crowd. You know something is up but all you get told is, call Kurenai.

When the bell rings and 6th period ends and everyone is rushing to the bus, Suigetsu hands you his cell and you call Kurenai.

You’ll want to say that the next few days went by in a blur, but since you’re trying to be honest with yourself you know that's a lie. That day was the first and only time anyone at your school ever saw you cry. You cried the whole hour and a half it took to get from the inner city to the suburbs. You managed to stop crying long enough to get home and close the door. By then you had convinced yourself Kurenai was lying. MySpace proved you wrong.

Your mother is the first to find you. Next Kakashi shows up at your front door. Shikamaru calls you and he gets dropped off at your house. Then Suigetsu shows up, winded on his bike. You two hadn’t talked in months and after this day will rarely talk ever again (you’ll be able to count it all on one hand for the next 10 years), but something told him he needed to show up, so he did.

After this, you won’t be able to watch, hear, or say anything about someone or something losing their life without feeling like your heart was seizing in your chest.. It’ll take you years to get over this.

It becomes a ritual to go smoke a blunt with Naruto. You’ll skip school and sit out by his grave, you’ll come after parties at the wee hours of the morning, for a while you come almost daily, as the year progresses it becomes monthly. Eventually you’ll make it a point to get out there on his birthday, even when you move out of the state. It goes from being a group activity to being a place of solitude as the years go by.

You’ll struggle with drugs (harder) after this. You’ve tried everything at least once except injecting heroin. You’ll lose an ex-girlfriend at 19 to opiates but will still think of Naruto while the wicked hands of lose crush your lungs. You’ll drop out of art school and have to live with your dad in another state for 9 months to graduate on time. You’ll have dangerous sex and catch curable diseases and luckily won’t knock anyone up. You’ll get a DUI and let a drug dealer borrow your car in exchange for ecstasy, xanax, and weed. It takes you almost a decade to start saying, I think I’m bisexual. You’ll fall out with Shikamaru and take years to reconcile but when you do you’ll realize you still would jump Shikamaru’s bones if you could (but you respect his long-term relationship with Temari so you won’t.) You’ll lose all interest in art. Your eyes stop seeing the shapes and lines that inspired. Everything is grey.

You’ll have reconstructive jaw surgery to resolve your TMJ which stops your migraines and also helps you quit smoking. Eventually the appeal of having a job, your own money, non-junkie friends, and being responsible will drive you to return to school, get a better job, and stop abusing substances.

Eventually you’ll stop allowing the regret to eat you up alive. You learn to endure. Most days, enduring is all you can ask of yourself.

Before you leave your old home town to return to your new home, miles and hours away from the pain of your previous life, you stop by Naruto’s grave.

You sit on his grave marker, the heavy forest he was laid next time does nothing to block the sun and it beats down on you as you roll up a joint.

“Hey Naruto”, you say. You spark your joint and stare into the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after being struck with the need to write about a friend of mine who commited suicide 10 years ago. This story is true, I've only changed the names and switched the gender of all mentioned parties. Please be mindful and respectful of that if you decide to leave a comment. This is the first time I've ever allowed myself to write down my feelings about my friend.


End file.
